Why a burning substation based Heathrow for a day

Heathrow is under increasing scrutiny due to his decision to close for almost 24 hours after a fire in a nearby electrical substation, although he could still receive energy from other parts of the network.

Senior management at the most busy airport in Europe made the decision to close on Friday while fighting to restore total power to a complex that uses the same amount of electricity as a small city.

But John Pettigrew, executive director of National Grid, who operates the high voltage transmission network of Great Britain, told The Financial Times that two other substations that serve Heathrow were working throughout the incident, which means that energy was always available, even if the airport could not take advantage of it quickly.

As the concerns grow about the resilience of the critical infrastructure of the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Monday “there are questions” so that the executives of the Center airport respond by the interruption scale.

Why wasn’t there enough supporting energy to run the airport?

Heathrow has enough diesel generators to feed critical operations, including its control tower and track lights, and passengers were able to leave the airport safely on Thursday night after the interruption was reported for the first time. But its generators lack the ability to administer the entire airport.

Simon Gallagher, Managing Director of Networks Services of the United Kingdom, a consulting specialized in electrical networks, said that few other airports have better backup supplies than Heathrow.

But he said that other industries “are much more resistant,” he added: “The airport industry as a whole has this problem with resilience … Other industries with even larger connections say they never get out of the offer.”

Heathrow has launched an internal review of the power cut and the posterior closure of the airport, directed by the Member of the Board and former Secretary of Transportation Ruth Kelly.

The National Energy System operator is leading a separate government investigation into the interruption and its impact on Heathrow and the surrounding area.

How does Heathrow resilience compare?

A period of the Data Center administered by the ARK data centers, which is equipped with 12 emergency generators, was also affected by the Friday’s substation fire, but says it managed to avoid the interruption when lighting its backup supply.

“I don’t think people who buy services would buy without this built -in resilience,” said Huw Owen, executive director of Ark.

Energy Minister Michael Shanks, on Tuesday accelerated Heathrow, suggesting that there was a “significant redundancy” integrated into the energy infrastructure surrounding the airport.

“The local network operator and the national network could … find a solution to connect all homes in a matter of hours,” he told parliamentarians. “We need to observe the resilience of the external network that connects to Heathrow, but the private network within Heathrow is what they need to check.”

A 2023 United States government report He found a large centers airport reported that he had 10 diesel fuel generators and sufficient fuel on the site to feed the entire airport for three weeks. The airport was seen as an atypical, analysts said.

Resilience must “achieve adequate balance between risks and costs,” said Olivier Jankovec, general director of Airports Commerce of the Commerce Group, the International Council of Europe. “Ensuring minimal interruptions and keeping operations in operation as much as possible simply is not always possible, especially when faced with rare and extreme events.”

Why did it take so long to restart if the energy was available?

While the fire took out the North Hyde substation out of operation, two others remained capable of providing energy to the airport. But to access the energy of the remaining two substations, Heathrow said he had to “reconfigure” his internal electrical networks.

In practice, this meant that the airport had to send technicians to its own energy distribution points, where the circuit switches physically alternated to disconnect to Heathrow from North Hyde and reconnect it with the other stations.

The airport also had to turn off, restart and systematically try hundreds of its systems before being able to resume operations.

Heathrow said: “Given the size and operational complexity of Heathrow, safely restart the operations after an interruption of this magnitude was a significant challenge.”

It is not clear how long he took every step of the process, and some experts said they were surprised by the time that the airport took to return to the normal operation.

Heathrow announced at 4.30 am on Friday that he would close until midnight, and 12.30 pm had begun to restart his systems. At 4 pm, the airport was “100 percent sure that all systems operated safely,” said Transportation Secretary Heidi Alexander. The first flights were restarted around 7pm.

“Somehow, this seems (having been) a failure of the process,” said David Wallom, a professor of computer science at the University of Oxford. “It seems that Heathrow had never considered the possibility of this fault scale.”

Should Heathrow have been better prepared?

All contingency planning requires a “regret of the economy,” said Malte Jansen, a researcher for energy policies at Sussex University.

“No technical system will be 100 percent failure proof,” he said. “I did not have the feeling that this was an reckless design: the system is designed to be reliable and a very unlikely case has been completed.”

However, the executives of the energy industry said that Heathrow should have been better prepared given their state as the most busy airport in Europe. The ability to change the energy quickly “should be a minimum standard,” said an executive.

A 2014 report by the Jacobs consultant, prepared as part of an previous Heathrow expansion impulse, said that “even a brief interruption of electricity supplies could have a lasting impact.”

But he concluded that “Heathrow is equipped with generation on the site and seems to have resistant electricity supplies that meet regulations and standards.”

Heathrow has spent a total of £ 7.4 billion on capital expenses at the airport since 2014, even in new security scanners. But at a time when the landing rates have increased, airlines have criticized their owners for spending this money inefficiently, leaving the airport with aging infrastructure.

Additional reports of Clara Murray in London. Ian Bott illustrations